Why life’s shortness—more than anything else—is what makes it meaningfulDeath might seem to render pointless all our attempts to create a meaningful life. Doesn’t meaning require transcending death through an afterlife or in some other way? On the...

The essays in this book - all of them published here for the first time - provide a long-overdue critical discussion of Jürgen Habermas's cascade of ideas. These are topped off by a freshet of original Habermas: in the final essay, he replies to the...

All of these essays focus on the concept of modernity in the philosophical work of Jurgen Habermas - an ambitious and carefully argued intellectual project that invites, indeed demands, rigorous scrutiny. Following an introductory overview of Habermas's...

The New York Times bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 • A New York Times Notable Book“A book of big and bold ideas, Humanly Possible is humane in approach and, more important, readable and worth reading. . . Bakewell is...

French philosopher Simone Weil's best known work that promotes mindful living and instructs readers how they can once again feel rooted, in a cultural and spiritual sense, to their environment A Penguin ClassicOne of the foremost French philosophers of...

Contemporary life is defined by excess. There must always be more, there is never enough. We need a surplus to what we need to be able to truly enjoy what we have. Slavoj Žižek's guide to surplus (and why it's enjoyable) begins by arguing that what is...

When he died suddenly in 1967, Isaac Deutscher had completed only the compelling first chapter of a long-anticipated biography of Lenin, published here. It covers Lenin’s family background, birth and early years in the backwater town of Simbirsk up to...

A collection of letters, diaries and various writings depicting the Lenin beyond political commitmentsThis vivid selection, compiled and introduced by Tamara Deutscher, written by Lenin and those who knew him, brings us the revolution in his everyday...

Foucault’s personal and political experimentation, its ambiguous legacy, and the rise of neoliberal politicsPart intellectual history, part critical theory, The Last Man Takes LSD challenges the way we think about both Michel Foucault and modern...

The Frankfurt School’s own legacy is best preserved by exercising an immanent critique of its premises and the conclusions to which they often led. By distinguishing between what is still and what is no longer alive in Critical Theory, these essays seek...

Why speed, flow, and direct expression now dominate cultural styleContemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like...

An engaging collection of late-life reflections and quick thoughts, a book unlike any other Agamben book.What can the senses of an attentive philosopher see, hear, and learn that can, in turn, teach us about living better lives? Perhaps it’s less a...

A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator--often as a daring smuggler of ideas from...

A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback.Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator—often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one...

A provocative reassessment of Heidegger’s critique of German Idealism from one of the tradition’s foremost interpreters. Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy ended—failed, even—in the German Idealist tradition. In The Culmination, Robert B. Pippin...

Now in paperback, Sandra Laugier's reconsideration of analytic philosophy and ordinary language.Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph...

Now in paperback, nine lectures from Jacques Derrida that challenge the influential Marxist distinction between thinking and acting.Theory and Practice is a series of nine lectures that Jacques Derrida delivered at the École Normale Supérieure in 1976...